


More Than Words Can Say

by SisterBlueSky



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale is Not Oblivious (Good Omens), Aziraphale is Patient (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Gabriel is a jerk, God Ships Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Heaven is terrible, Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), Light Angst, M/M, Protective Crowley (Good Omens), and also full of backstabbing jerks, really it's barely there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26869153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SisterBlueSky/pseuds/SisterBlueSky
Summary: Some time after the world didn't end, Gabriel visits Aziraphale. Aziraphale tells him to shove off. It doesn't end well."Did you really think your little wards could keep me out?" Gabriel said. Aziraphale followed his gaze to the large old rug, which covered the large old Circle, which Aziraphale had happily forgotten since he and Heaven had ceased communications. It had never crossed his mind that it might be not only a means of communication, but potentially an unlocked back door into the middle of his shop. Oh, shit.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 104





	1. The First Part

**Author's Note:**

> Rated teen and up for Crowley's potty mouth, because his enraged helpless cursing makes me chortle, and I can't help writing it.
> 
> EDIT: Oops! Forgot to say this was multi-chapter! Sorry, readers! It's all finished except for minor tweaking, and will be added to asap.

This has been a good day, Aziraphale thought happily. 

It had been a productive day at his bookshop, ('productive' meaning he had a grand total of two customers, and neither of them had succeeded in purchasing anything. Though one young man, a student or something by the looks of him, had given him a bit of trouble. After being gently rebuffed at the counter, he had circled around and quietly managed to manoeuvre a copy of Crime and Punishment-how apropos!- into his messenger bag when he had thought no one was looking. How wrong he had been. Little did he know that the bookshop’s proprietor had oodles of eyes, and even the non-ethereal pair in his corporation wore spectacles only for show. The young man was going to be very surprised when he got to his destination and found the bag empty, and only a fuzzy recollection of having put something interesting in there. He would probably get a bit of a frustrated headache and need a nice long nap. The book wasn’t a first edition, and it was unsigned, but it was the principle of the thing, wasn’t it? Aziraphale may not have been a very successful angel, and Heaven knew he had his own struggles with Her commandments (particularly gluttony when it came to food and drink, and being covetous when it came to unusual and very antique Bibles,) but he was a stern enforcer of Thou Shalt Not Steal-especially when it came to one of his precious and carefully curated books. 

Aziraphale flipped the sign on the door from Open to Closed, and then went around and pulled down the blinds, adding showers of twinkley golden dust motes to the already dusty atmosphere. He paused for a minute to pull out his pocket watch, gave it a satisfied glance and snapped it shut. Just enough time to nip down to that new patisserie for some éclairs before Crowley made his regular late-afternoon appearance. 

They had fallen into a comfortable routine since the world didn't end, spending more and more time in each other's company. They had long lunches at the Ritz and delightful dinners at lovely ethnic restaurants-even a picnic in the park!-and of course, the occasional good bottle or two (or ten,) of wine of an evening in the backroom of the bookshop or Crowley's flat, talking about everything under the sun. Only the picnic was something entirely new, but everything felt like a sparkling new experience without the watchful eyes of Heaven and Hell on them at every moment. 

And sometimes, more and more often, when they were sitting together, deeply inebriated in the backroom of the shop or sober on Crowley's sofa, (which had mysteriously and miraculously acquired some tartan sofa pillows which made it much less fashionable and ever so much more comfortable,) their hands would touch and just rest there together, the angel's soft, scholarly hand with the writer's callus on the index finger brushing the demon's long, elegant (and admittedly rather dry and slightly scaly) palm. It was all quite heady and exciting. Aziraphale would feel that enormous, mutually unspoken something bubbling up between them. He would look deeply into Crowley's, er, lenses, and Crowley's mouth would go slack, and Aziraphale would think _At long last_ ...and then Crowley would go off on some drunken tangent about what She was drinking when She came up with marsupials, and Aziraphale would feel the need to defend the Almighty's good judgment (and sobriety,) and they would both drown the feeling with alcohol until one of them (Crowley,) fell asleep. 

Well, feelings were easy, weren't they? They'd been feeling like mad since nearly the beginning of time. Words were hard, especially when you've been forced to cram down a multitude of affectionate words and deny them for millennia, so the one you held dear didn't end up as a glittery golden grease-spot, or a Hell-mauled snake-skin handbag hanging on a coat-rack in Dagon‘s office. 

Aziraphale sighed deeply and shoved the bothersome thoughts aside, as he tidied up his counter, closing his ledger, (happily, the line under SALES for the day was blank,) scribbling a quick note to Crowley if he should show up while he was out. He put on his scarf and placed a bookmark in his book, which happened to be an epic period-piece romance featuring time-travel and kilts.[1] (Then hid it in the desk drawer because Crowley _would_ tease him about his guilty reading pleasures, and had been, mercilessly, since he caught him reading Pamela in 1740,) and made ready for his shopping trip. Crowley was coming by soon, after an hour or so of primping, no doubt with a bottle of wine, or chocolates, or flowers. He really, truly was such a dear, and Aziraphale vowed to never stop reminding him of that, though the silly demon would be slow-roasted over hot coals before he'd accept the compliment. 

He was washing up his cocoa mug when he felt a change in the air, a frigid chill that made his flesh prickle, and tickled his nose with the smell of ozone. Very quietly he put the mug in the drying rack and turned around. Oh bugger. "Gabriel. It's been quite some time."

"Did you really think your little wards could keep me out?" Gabriel said. Aziraphale followed his gaze to the large old rug, which covered the large old Circle, which Aziraphale had happily forgotten since he and Heaven had ceased communications. It had never crossed his mind that it might be not only a means of communication, but potentially an unlocked back door into the middle of his shop. _Oh, shit._

Gabriel was looking a bit...stressed. Oh, it was nothing very obvious to the untrained eye. His violet eyes were a bit wide, his tie just a tad crooked, his hair not quite its usual business-like coif. But this was the Archangel Gabriel, 'God is my Strength', Messenger of the Most High, whose one earthly appreciation was a spotless, well-fitting suit or designer pullover and expensive tie. His appearing in such a mussed condition couldn't have been more alarming if he had shown up blood-stained and clutching an axe. The thwarting of his plans for the Apocalypse by a handful of mortals-four of them under the age of twelve- a pint-sized Antichrist that was more interested in pirates and spaceships than destroying the world, and two former agents of Heaven and Hell who then inconveniently refused to be murdered afterward, had obviously done his mental state no favours. 

"I've never understood what you see in these things." As he walked towards Aziraphale, Gabriel's hand drifted carelessly over a tall tower of books, causing it to teeter dangerously. "Dusty, ink-stained bits of bark."

Aziraphale's hands twitched with the urge to steady them. "If you have something to say, say it, Gabriel. And do be careful with those books, they're quite old and somewhat fragile. " He needed Gabriel to do whatever he had come for and go away, before Crowley sauntered in all unknowing, please, oh, please. Erasing the Circle had only flitted across his mind, but he had warded the shop after Armageddon, per Crowley's suggestion. Not as strongly as he might have, because he couldn't really believe that every soul in Heaven he had ever known considered him a turncoat and hated his very guts. (Deep in his heart, he still hoped that some lesser angel, perhaps one of his old Sphere, might drop by for tea and a friendly chat some millennia.) Not every angel, surely not. Just all the Archangels closest to Gabriel, certainly. Even without his influence, well, they weren't the nicest angels. Uriel had always been a bit of a stiff, and Michael never had a good word to say to anybody after The War in Heaven, and Sandalphon was...Sandalphon. Still, there had been no need to be so unpleasant that day outside the shop, and Uriel did hit him very hard. 

"Pfftt," Gabriel said, with a shrug. The stack of books wobbled helplessly, gave a sad sigh and fell over. "Whatever."

Aziraphale winced. "Gabriel, please state your business." He spoke boldly, as if he was already working up a good hot fireball. He was praying that Gabriel wouldn’t be so unhinged as to dare to call his bluff. Crowley had scared the dickens out of the Archangels with that belch of Hellfire. 

"I got an official Reprimand," Gabriel said, in disbelieving tones. "In my inbox. She wrote me up. Me." _And it's all your fault_ was the unspoken subtext there. "After everything I've done for Heaven, all these thousands of years working toward Her Great Plan, moving the organization forward, giving it structure, _building a brand_. Every angel in the Silver City is talking about it. What did I ever do to deserve this kind of humiliation?"

"Well," Aziraphale muttered quietly, suppressing an eye-roll. "You did collude with Hell and attempt to incinerate me with Hellfire, without so much as a hearing before the Host of Heaven. Perhaps She didn't like that." 

Gabriel went right on talking. He was beginning to pace. "And then! And _then!_ Michael called a meeting, which is ridiculous in the first place, because I am the Archangel fucking Gabriel and _I_ call the meetings, I always call the meetings, and I told her so, and then they _all_ wanted to discuss my 'stress levels' and my 'poor executive decisions', and my 'dangerous career trajectory', and maybe I need ‘personal time to reflect’-

The outraged finger-quotes were getting out of control. The fine down on the back of Aziraphale's neck rose to attention and waved frantically. In the time since Aziraphale had last laid eyes on him, Gabriel had obviously become (even more so,) a dangerously unpredictable loose cannon on the deck. He wondered if he just nodded and let Gabriel ramble long enough if he could manage to scoot just a tad closer to the counter. The device Crowley had given him was buried there under a deep drift of old issues of various (mostly defunct) London newspapers, still remarkably crisp and neatly folded, and dating back more than a century. Though Aziraphale rarely touched his nice new phone and often lost track of it in the clutter, it was always on and fully charged, and never ran out of data, or racked up a ridiculous overage fee, mostly because he wasn't aware that was a thing that could happen. He had a vague memory of Crowley once demonstrating a feature on the thing that could call him with the press of a single button. He and Crowley had also watched a film recently on Crowley's enormous television set, (on a American channel that seemed to specialize in programs where a young woman was menaced by some dreadful man who was her boyfriend, or her boss, or a mass murderer, and sometimes all three,) and in one of them Heather or Ashley or whatever, used the clever button in that fashion to call for help. Aziraphale was aware of some uncomfortable parallels between his current situation and the predicaments of the unfortunate young women. He wished he could remember what had happened to them all at the conclusion of their individual photoplays, but it had been such a marathon slog of television viewing, and halfway through Crowley had fallen asleep on his shoulder and the rest of the evening was a giddy blur. He took a subtle half-step towards the counter. "I fail to see what any of that has to do with me."

 _"You_ messed with the Plan! _I_ got an Official Reprimand in my Eternal Work Record! And now you get to just hang out down here with your stupid human things, swilling that, that alcohol stuff, and eating raw fish flesh with your _foul consort_ -" With great effort of will, Gabriel cut off the oncoming rant, unclenched his fists and very visibly got a grip on himself. “But it’s fine. It’s fine. It’s nothing that can’t be fixed, right? Get back in the groove, do something to show everyone why I’m in charge, something big.” Gabriel smiled ingratiatingly, as if selling Aziraphale a beautiful and very expensive car that would lose steering immediately after purchase and fling him off a cliff. “That’s where you come in, old buddy.”

Aziraphale sputtered indignantly, outrage overriding the still, small voice of self-preservation that was begging him to just shut-up and cower already. “Buddy?? _Buddy??_ You tried to kill me! I am not by any means your ‘buddy’! And I am not inclined to help you! At all!”

Gabriel's jaw clenched and Aziraphale held his breath. At that moment, the old rotary dial phone on the desk rang shrilly. Aziraphale nearly leaped out of his skin. “I should probably pick up, don't you think,” he said, taking another hesitant step. 

"Focus, Aziraphale," Gabriel said. "This is important." He had a good idea who was on the line, and he was not part of this little confab. The demon was irrelevant right now anyway. He was an unknown variable since they learned about his holy water immunity, too dangerous to approach without some serious backup. Michael and the others refused to authorize that at the moment, which was...irritating, to say the least. And Hell wouldn't touch the demon, either, so there went some leverage.[2] Not that he needed leverage anyway. Aziraphale was foolish and soft, give him a stern talking to and apply a little pressure in the right place and he would always fold like...like...something soft that folds. Technically, Gabriel had also been _strongly_ advised by Michael not to attempt to lay a finger on the dangerous Principality for his own safety, considering the unknown and potentially unholy amounts of power he possessed, but none of the other archangels had expressly said he couldn't stand at a safe distance and _persuade_ the lesser angel very, very hard. He still felt slightly smug having found that loophole so easily. Thinking outside the box, that's why he deserved the corner office...or something in the Heavenly equivalent of the corner office. Heaven had an extremely open floor plan.

The ancient land-line telephone rang, and rang, sounding put-out at being ignored. Gabriel made a sharp gesture with his hand and the reliable old device uttered a strangled _tink!_ and cut off mid-ring. “All you have to do,” Gabriel said, his smile strained, one eye twitching slightly. “Is repent. Easy-peasy. My Reprimand will be expunged when I bring the wayward one back to the flock, and I can forget about that ’reflective leave-of-absence’ crap. You’ll get a new job, well, yeah, okay, another demotion, probably get busted down permanently to a desk in Souls and Receiving this time but hey, free ticket back into the Celestial Sphere, still a win-win, am I right? Just come back with me now and you can apologize for that whole Antichrist snafu, sign your official reprimand and deny your demonic," Gabriel clenched his teeth and bit out the next word. "... _Friend,_ before the Host-" 

"I would _never!_ " Aziraphale actually gasped and clutched at his heart. Betray Crowley? After everything they had been through, after everything they had been to each other through the ages in spite of every instinct of self-preservation or threats from their superiors? Not for the wide world, not for Heaven, not for his life. And certainly not for Gabriel. "The very idea! Crowley has been ever so kind and good to me, even when he was supposed to be my enemy, and the dearest friend in times of trouble, often better than I deserved. He has more goodness and mercy and kindness in his little finger, and true love and wonder for all Her creation, and desire to preserve it, than you have in your entire body! No! No! Absolutely not!” 

Aziraphale had worked himself into such a panting fury that any remaining terror he had of his former boss had evaporated. He glowed in the dimly-lit bookshop like a small sun, his wings just on the verge of entering the mortal plane and every feather ruffled in indignation.

The moment stretched out. Gabriel’s brow furrowed, his eyes narrowed, he pursed his lips. “So that’s a hard...maybe?”

If Aziraphale had actually possessed the power to belch Hellfire at that moment, Gabriel would have resembled a sharp-dressed charcoal briquette. Aziraphale turned off the wrathful glow and willed away the stress-headache that wanted to form behind his eyes. “It means NO. Tend to your knitting, and I will tend to mine. I am quite content here with my shop and my books, and I have no desire to return to Heaven under any circumstances. If I had my part to play in the End of Days all over again, I would do it just the same. I do not repent, and I will not become Crowley’s Judas to salvage your job."

Gabriel’s frozen smile had become less of a smile and more a baring of teeth, as it finally began to sink in that for the first time since the beginning of time, no smile was smooth enough, no stern command threatening enough, to make his most annoying underling cave in to his demands. "You can't disobey me. You'll Fall."

Aziraphale considered this. He had already done a lot of wrong things in his career, and he hadn't Fallen yet. "If I am Damned, it will be by Her hand, not yours."

Gabriel fumed, face growing red. "You'll be sorry," he said at last. It was the petty threat of a beaten schoolyard bully. 

Aziraphale shrugged. "I doubt that." 

Gabriel glared. "I'll make _him_ sorry."

"If you could, you would have used that threat as soon as you arrived, so I doubt even more that you can."

Gabriel stood there, fists clenched, hair mussed, with no other cards to play.

"A reprimand is not really so terrible, you know," Aziraphale couldn't help adding, trying to be positive and helpful, as always, even to someone who had treated him badly. "Even a demotion can be quite the improving experience. It builds character. If you recall, I was once seriously demoted, and I got reprimands from you all the time, and why, just look at me now." He told himself that he actually meant these words with the utmost sincerity, and he did, but possibly he was also being a bit of a bastard and twisting the knife just the tiniest bit. Luckily schadenfreude was not a mortal sin, and there was no eleventh commandment such as Thou Shalt Not be Petty. 

Judging by his expression, Gabriel felt the words like a slap in the face. "Go home, Gabriel," Aziraphale added, with something close to pity for his old boss. He had all of Heaven, but he would never know the little, human joys of a good book, or a glass of wine, or the smile of someone familiar and beloved that was meant just for him, and while he might be respected Up Above, even feared, no one really liked him all that much. If he had ever been clapped in chains and threatened with the guillotine, or cornered by Nazi spies, he doubted if anyone among the Host would even turn a hair. "Go back to Heaven, take your medicine, and learn to be better."

There is nothing quite so dangerous as a powerful person in the moment they are denied something they want by a lesser someone who had, on all previous occasions, said yes, and Gabriel had been Powerful with the capital 'P' for a very, very long time. And even worse, the lesser someone pitied him. This sudden desire to physically grab Aziraphale and give him a nasty wrist-burn until he cried, it couldn't be injured Pride, or Wrath. Those were offences worthy of a Fall. Archangels weren't Proud, and didn't do Wrath and they didn't Fall, (except for You-Know-Who, but he got what he deserved,) so Gabriel struggled with what he was feeling. Frustration! Righteous Indignation! Yes! Where did this prissy Principality get off? When it came to mercy Gabriel was the giver, not the givee. 

“You, you, you..." Gabriel said, fists clenched. He had always been an excellent middle-manager, but never an angel that could come up with a witty and cutting comeback on the fly. "You and your _words,_ and your stupid sheaves of bark-” The still air of the shop stirred ominously, loose papers fluttered. Gabriel growled and took a step forward. Aziraphale took a step back. “You always talk and talk and _talk_. Just once, just once, can't you just _shut up_.”

Somewhere under a neatly completed book of cross-words puzzles (written in ink,) Aziraphale's mobile pounded out a deeply muffled baseline of We Will Rock You. _Crowley,_ Aziraphale thought, and made a dash for it.

The sudden release of angelic power struck Aziraphale like a crashing wave. The world went bright white. Aziraphale felt himself falling backward through a snowstorm of printed pages, a blizzard of cherished written words. Plato's Republic and The Importance of Being Earnest and Hamlet. The Bible and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Pall Mall Gazette and a hasty note to a demon telling him to make himself at home while he was out, he'd be back in a jiffy. And under the blare of car alarms going off all along Oxford Street came Gabriel’s final say on the little drama that had just played out. “Oh. Oh I am so fired.”

*****************************

Crowley had woken up that morning...ish, had a long leisurely, very hot shower (Satan bless modern plumbing,) and spent an hour or two primping in front of the full length mirror in the bedroom, trying on different configurations of gender, outfits, and hairstyles. He finally settled for his usual presentation and the same basic black-on-black Posh Young Professional With A Debauched Edge look he'd been selling to Humanity for the last thirty years or so. Tight black jeans, black silk dress shirt unbuttoned enough to show a little chest hair, hair slicked back and just long enough so it curled against the nape of his neck. He was mostly out of the temptation business, but what the Heaven, it was a classic. 

He tended his plants, gave them a good talking-to, then drank another cup of dark, bitter coffee, and cringed at how much tartan had already crept into his sleek, spare interior design since the Little Apocalypse that Couldn’t. Gah, what next, cabbage roses and doilies? He vanished most of it, even though Aziraphale would miracle it right back the next time he came over. He'd be skinned before he'd admit it, but he was actually kind of digging the cushions. They could stay. (Crowley snapped his fingers and the horrible plaid transformed into a much less eye-searing black, red, and gray.) 

That had been a good evening, and an even better morning. Aziraphale had been dragging him around to different museums and book fairs all that week, so Crowley had decided to retaliate by introducing the angel to the most tedious modern television programming he could think of. A long, long (perhaps miraculously long,) marathon of truly awful, low budget, made-for-television movies featuring distressed damsels, where they must have blown most of the writing budget on the lead's hair and makeup, had turned into a bit a of a bust. Crowley had thought the angel would lost interest quickly and they could get down to serious drinking, and whatever other possibilities might present themselves to a couple of deeply pickled man-shaped beings in a dark room on a soft sofa, (heh heh.) [3] But Aziraphale had become riveted and surprisingly invested in the perils and tribulations of the cookie-cutter heroines onscreen. Or perhaps not so surprisingly: Crowley knew Aziraphale's secret guilty reading pleasure was a good (or not so good,) romance novel. 

Admittedly, Crowley had been involved in a lot of truly awful television-related decisions, but he refused to take responsibility for this tripe, some human hack-writer had come up with it all on their own. It didn't take long before Crowley had been bored to tears, feeling personally, deeply insulted to his demonic soul by the clumsy, evil machinations of the bad guy, and didn't give a howl in Hell what happened to Jennifer or Melissa or Isabella or whatevertheHeaven her name was in the end. He wished he had suggested a classic James Bond marathon instead.[4]

He slouched down in a way that suggested several more vertebrae than the average, and would have made a human spine need quite a lot of physical therapy, and let his head droop heavily over onto Aziraphale's shoulder. He waited for Aziraphale to grumble and gently shove him off, but he merely sighed and settled like a freshly fluffed pillow, and there they sat. Aziraphale felt so warm and soft, and he smelled like book-dust and the salty buttered popcorn he'd been eating, and that underlying angel smell like fresh-fallen snow. Sure, other angels smelled like snow, too, but not the soft fluffy kind that made you think of a warm sweaters and mulled wine and shiny gifts under the Christmas tree, no, other angels smelled like wet sleet in the darkest part of Winter that stung your face and hurt to your bones, and made you want to crawl into a bottle of brandy and hide there until Spring. 

Eventually Crowley, being the smooth seducer and corrupter of all things pure and good that he was, fell asleep. He woke up half-buried in an avalanche of plaid pillows with a blanket over him, to the sound of Aziraphale murmuring sweetly to the plants, who had the nerve to perk up and bloom in response. “You’re spoiling them rotten,” Crowley pointed out. “Spare the rod, spoil the...sprout. They’ll never amount to anything if you coddle them, angel.”

“Oh, pooh,” was Aziraphale’s witty and highly intellectual response, then he handed him a cup of coffee and headed off to make a mess of Crowley’s formerly spotless, modern, and completely unused state-of-the-art kitchen. Aziraphale loved fine food, but he also had some limited cooking skills, one of them being the good old-fashioned English fry-up that left a haze of grease in the air, the morning repast beloved of a nation that had an empire to maintain and wars to fight, and after fifty years or so of regular consumption tended to make a mortal heart blow an artery like a cheap gasket under pressure. For Aziraphale that was not really a concern, but he would have considered it a small price to pay for having a good, hot breakfast in you. 

Crowley had waited until Aziraphale’s back was turned, then waved one long, damning finger at every leaf, bloom, and branch, particularly the droopy, lazy Begonia Rex the angel had been making kissy-faces over, then bared his fangs and slowly drew said finger across his throat. The mass of greenery trembled to their roots. Crowley then chuckled like a happy axe-murderer and drank coffee, and his angel, er, _the_ angel, smiled at him over his newspaper and ate his beans and toast and sliced tomatoes, and Crowley had thought _I want us to do this forever_. And then realized, with a rush that left him light-headed, that they absolutely could. 

So on this morning Crowley actually hummed as he primped, and misted, and mulched, and made his plans for the day. He felt light-hearted in the lift going down, and didn't incinerate a single pigeon as he sauntered out to his car, (though had he spotted one single, tiny splat of bird-shit on the gleaming windscreen of the Bentley, it might have been a different story.) He was going to suggest a long drive in the country in the next day or two. Coincidentally, there was suddenly quite a lot of nice property for sale or rent out that way as well, complete with charming little cottages. Crowley had paused before he went out the door to sweep up a sheaf of real estate listings. He had been casually slipping them into Aziraphale‘s to-be-read book pile, and many had under-linings and little notations that might pique the angel‘s interest. (Ocean view! Built in bookcases! Wine cellar! Close to local shops and areas of historic interest!) They could make a day of it, pack a picnic or stop for dinner somewhere. Aziraphale could bring his usual thermos of tea. Crowley would bring a treat for the angel to keep him happy on the way, maybe some of those glossy ribbon sweets that Aziraphale had once mentioned enjoying, the enormous chunks that used to be sold every Christmas at Woolworths that never fit comfortably in your mouth and gradually cut the human tongue to shreds after a good, thorough slobber.[5] Nevermind that Christmas was months away and Woolworths had been out of business for more than a decade. Crowley being what he still was that wasn’t much of an impediment, but that clerk at Charbonnel et Walker was certainly going to be surprised to find a nicely-wrapped box of the stuff in stock.

Crowley rolled off at a relatively sedate ninety-three miles per hour, a terror to any living soul who dared hesitate on a cross-walk. He tucked his knees under the wheel and let the Bentley take over while he got out his phone and rang up Aziraphale. It rang twice, then made a weird noise in his ear and cut off. Crowley leaned back and hissed, then hit the angel's number again. A tiny seed of dread planted itself in the black, worm-eaten shell of Crowley's demonic heart. That blasted antique had been sitting in the same spot on Aziraphale's desk, faithfully doing its duty for at least a century. It always worked because the angel expected it to work. It couldn't _not_ work. 

Unless something...happened. 

To the shop. 

Or Aziraphale. Again.

It had been a weird feeling for a demon, feeling happy and free, planning a future. Crowley was still a demon, even if every fiend in Hell would like to see him melted into an oily puddle, or hanging as a dart board in the Infernal Affairs Office recreation room. So in retrospect, he should have expected all the happy things he planned would turn to shit. Demons weren’t supposed to be friends with angels, or watch terrible television with them all night, or amble patiently around behind them at book fairs and hold their shopping bags while they haggled. Or save the whole world and have a life together. He was still a demon, and demons didn’t do love, or happiness, or forever, and they sure as Heaven didn’t get happy endings. 

"No no nononono," Crowley muttered, through gritted fangs. "No nononono, we are _not_ doing this, not again." Forget the landline, Aziraphale had a mobile phone, he had given it to him, and it would ring somewhere in that mouse-nest he called a bookshop and he would pick up. It might take a while because Aziraphale was always hiding it from himself and forgetting he had it, under his Cross-words puzzle or in a drawer or propping up an atlas. He was probably upstairs in that dusty little bedroom that hadn't heard a snore since Crowley had entirely too much fun at a music festival and needed a place to sleep it off,[6] and the sound of it was muffled by yet more ceiling-high stacks of books. Or maybe Aziraphale was wandering around downstairs with a biscuit and a cup of tea, wondering what on earth that confounded noise was, and oh yes, it was that new phone thingy again, where had it got to now?

It rang, and Crowley urged, no _commanded_ , that imaginary Aziraphale to put down his tea and his nibbles, use both hands and search a little harder, Satanblessit, and just find the bloody thingy, so his heart could quit pounding in his throat and crawl back in his chest where it belonged. 

_Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice message system recording._ It didn't sound like the usual calm, professional recorded voice. It sounded stressed and ragged, even a bit weepy, a personal assistant having a nervous breakdown her first day on the job and desperately trying to keep her chin up after watching her boss suffer some unexpected calamity, spontaneous combustion, maybe, or an alien abduction. _Oh, oh, no. I'm sorry the party you have called cannot be reached at this time, or any time, I suppose._..(the voice cracked and started to fade,) _oooh, dear_...."

Then came the electronic equivalent of a death rattle, and silence. Crowley threw his own phone across the car and pounded the steering wheel, punctuating each blow with a curse. "Shit! Shit! Shit! Fuck!" The Bentley's horn gave a reproachful bleat. Crowley rubbed a shaking hand across the dash. "Sorry, sorry." 

It was a good thing that Crowley didn't actually need oxygen, because that tiny, poisonous seed had sprouted and grown into a strangling vine that was squeezing his lungs. He gave a long, whining exhale, ran his talons through his hair until it looked like a dark auburn haystack. His eyes went full predator-yellow, he flexed his hands on the wheel, his knuckles popped. "Bugger this," he snarled. "He is fine, and the bookshop is fine, and everything is fine, because I refuse to be shit on by You again, You hear me? I know You do, You hear everything, and if everything is _not_ fine-which it is-I am, I am...” ( He failed at finding something exceptionally terrible to believably threaten the Lord Almighty with,) “...I am going to be _horribly evil_ and even more than usually _pissed off at you._ " Yeah, that should do it. He stepped on the accelerator. The Bentley roared with approval and lunged forward into traffic. Oncoming cars swerved onto the pavement, careless walkers absorbed with their electronic gadgets re-entered the real world at the last second and leaped for their lives. "Come on, old girl, _let's go pick up our angel_."

****************

Crowley made the last screaming turn and hurtled into a parking spot. The Bentley flung the door open and rumbled encouragingly. He half-expected a scene of devastation as he stepped out, a smoking crater filled with rubble surrounded by police and emergency services, but there was no crater or flashing lights. The usual denizens of Soho drifted by looking mildly shell-shocked, some of them muttering into their phones about the recent, weirdly localized earthquake. Crowley stepped out of the car, briefly flicking out his tongue to taste the air, and then spat out the bitter taste of sleet and hypocritical purity. _Angels_. There was the tiniest crack in a corner of one of the shop windows, a mere spider web, hardly noticeable under the grime of centuries, really. The old building had survived city-wide fire, and plague and riot, the bombs of two world wars, and being burnt to ashes and then miraculously restored without so much as a singed shingle by a pre-pubescent antichrist, who had most definitely not added that little cracked pane of glass. So nothing alarming about that little crack at all, nope.

WALK, Crowley commanded his legs, which had decided on general principles and in the spirit of mental and emotional self-preservation to not do that. A few jerky, reluctant steps forward and they recruited Crowley's hands into their protest by going cold and refusing to open the door. Crowley cursed horribly and shoved it open with his elbow and a little push of Hellish willpower. 

Crowley took a step or two inside and felt something crunch under his foot. It was the sad remains of Aziraphale's seldom used and often forgotten mobile phone, which had been caught up in whatever whirlwind had hit the interior and shattered to bits. The bookshop looked as though a small, concentrated bomb, made of the collected literary works of three hundred-odd years, had exploded, and Aziraphale was on his knees in the middle of the blast crater, clutching his head. 

Thankfully it was still attached to his shoulders and he seemed at first glance to still have all his other important parts, and Crowley inwardly, gratefully took back all the mean, bitter things he had said to, and about, Her over the millennia. For now, anyway. Crowley's own knees were on the edge of a sit-down strike, so he staggered over and clutched at his, err, the angel, for support. "Oh thank Satan! Are you alright?"

Aziraphale clutched him right back, wide-eyed and looking concussed, every hair on end like the survivor of a near-miss lightning strike. "Gone! And never called me mother!" 

"Eh?" Crowley said, befuddled and wondering when Aziraphale had found the time, between dragging him to book auctions and watching bad telly and scaring the shit out of him like this, to join some kind of Soho amateur dramatic society specializing in Victorian melodrama. 

Aziraphale caught a page that was hovering in the air, one of several that were still drifting down like falling leaves. He jabbed a finger at the page, then pointed at his own eyes and sadly shook his head. His chin wobbled. "Words, words, words."

 _What do you read, my lord?_ Bloody Hamlet now, Crowley thought. "Not following you, angel."

Aziraphale’s hands swooped and dived through the air. Crowley grabbed them before they put an eye out. “Don’t know Signing, either.”

Aziraphale gave an exasperated sigh. With Crowley's help he got to his feet, then held up his hand, palm out, in the universal gesture for _half a minute_. He stepped back, clasped his hands together prayerfully, then simpered up at the ceiling.

"It was another angel," Crowley said. "Right, I gathered that much, I could smell the bastard."

Aziraphale nodded. Crowley watched carefully. Aziraphale held up one finger, held his hands apart, wide, wider. Oh lovely, charades. "One word. Wide. Long. Big. Bigger. Huge. Enormous?"   
  
Aziraphale tapped his nose, then tugged his ear. He gave another sigh, the sigh of someone about to do something distasteful but necessary, like receiving a kiss from a moustachioed great-aunt, or enduring painfully loud bebop while riding in a dear-friend's car as it careened at terrifying speeds through the streets of London on the way to a nice restaurant.

“On the nose. Alright, second word, sounds like. Pull? Stretch?- _Ooh_ , er, what are you doing with your hands now-” Crowley's voice had risen a nervous octave as Aziraphale’s hands dipped below waist-level, making a motion that was very much not a demonstration of how to correctly swing a cricket bat. “Oh! Wank! Wanker! Enormous wanker! Gabriel!" Crowley snarled. "Ooh, that glittery bastard! That Effortless _git!_ I'll rip his bloody wings off and stuff them up his-"

Aziraphale was standing still with his hands on his hips. "Yeah, right, sorry, you were, er, saying?"

Aziraphale blinked rapidly and staggered back, with the look of someone unexpectedly having a million camera flashes going off in his face all at once. He clasped his hand to his forehead dramatically and pretended to swoon. Crowley had the sudden, unpleasant image of his poor angel lying there in his fallen books, like a dying orphan in a snowdrift, while Gabriel stood over him, his clenched fists crackling with ethereal power, the bullying shit. “Did he _smite_ you?”

Aziraphale nodded sadly. 

Crowley once again rethought all his long-held beliefs about God and Heaven and any other angel other than Aziraphale, and decided that yes, he still hated Her holy guts with a fiery purple passion, and all of Heaven could absolutely, positively could kiss his sulphurous demonic arse. "Huh," Crowley said. "I didn't know that was a thing that angels did to other angels." 

It wasn't. When Lucifer and his followers had been cast out the Lord had done most of the heavy lifting, and the angel's part had mostly been accomplished with a lot of shoving and punching and righteous kicks to the posterior. Oh, there had been some edged weapons waving around on both sides, but those were mostly to, er, lend weight to their moral arguments, so to speak. Smiting hadn’t really become a popular option until after The Fall of Man, and to the best of Aziraphale's knowledge, smiting had never been used against an unfallen angel still full of God's grace. Perhaps that was why he was merely damaged, rather than reduced to a great lot of sparkling component atoms. Well, he could ponder the whys and wherefores later. 

Aziraphale picked up another book, pointed at his eyes, then at the page. Crowley felt sick. “You...you can’t read it now. Not any of them? In any language?” He waved his hands around, taking in the general disaster area. 

Aziraphale shook his head. He put the book aside as gentle as a kitten, gave it a little pat for good measure, eyes wide and damp and hurt. It was the face he wore when he had come back from a really degrading Heavenly Performance Review, or had just been reminded that his bookshop and everything in it was ashes. “Oh, angel. I’m sorry. You can speak, though, yeah? That's something.”

Aziraphale flopped his hands helplessly. “Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart-”

“So only other people’s words then,” Crowley said. “Have you tried...healing yourself?” Aziraphale gave him A Look. “Yeah, dumb question, probably the first thing you tried.” Crowley rubbed his forehead. “This would all be so much easier if you could just write a note or something...wait...can you?”

Aziraphale’s eyes lit up. He ran to his desk, Crowley close behind, and pulled out a scrap of paper. He searched around until he found a pencil, then eagerly leaned forward. Crowley looked over his shoulder. Aziraphale’s pencil made a long, illegible squiggle and stopped. "Oh.” Crowley said slowly. “Oh, well I guess it stands to reason, if you can’t read, you wouldn’t be able to...

"What, all my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop?" Aziraphale said. He covered his face with his hands.

"Shh, angel. We‘ll fix this, I promise. We’ll talk to Bookgirl, and if that doesn’t work we’ll bring out the heavy artillery and get Adam to, to mess everything about again. We‘ll find a way, I promise, I promise. I’ll pull Gabriel‘s GQ arse down from Heaven and tear the fix out of him with my claws, one feather at a time, if I have to-”

Aziraphale's eyes widened and he clutched at Crowley's lapels with panicky tightness. "Come not between the dragon and his wrath!"

"Alright, alright, alright, we'll save the archangel arse-kicking as a last resort." Though they both knew that even Crowley’s unholy wrath wouldn’t give him a win if he tangled with an Archangel. Gabriel would walk away dazed and slightly smudged, while Crowley would end up as a very small amount of dust in an urn on Aziraphale's desk. 

Aziraphale's shoulders shook. Crowley wanted to scream at Heaven or bite holes in something (or someone,) but instead he leaned forward hesitantly and held out his arms. Aziraphale clutched him around the waist, digging in with blunt fingers, holding on tight, right where Crowley’s wings were folding around them both on another plane of existence. 

It figured, Crowley thought, that he finally got his arms full of angel when they were both too miserable to enjoy the experience.   
__________________________

[1] Aziraphale didn't usually read modern literature, (that is, anything published after nineteen fifty or so,) but it was a brand new world and he was expanding his literary horizons. _The Lady and The Laird_ had been highly praised by the nice young manicurist at the nail salon, and Aziraphale had been so intrigued he had immediately acquired a copy for himself. This may or may not have been because the hero was described as tall with red hair, and gave Aziraphale a tingly flashback to when he had crossed paths with Crowley back in the eleven-hundreds, and Crowley's long pipe-stem legs in a kilt, and how nicely the Clan McDonald tartan had set off his complexion. 

[2] Gabriel had tried to network with Hell to maybe convince them to take another swipe at eliminating the demon traitor, resulting in a lot of rude fiendish laughter and crude suggestions as to where he could stick his halo. 

[3] He had no idea. Or rather he had too many ideas. A demon doesn't spend more than six-thousand years observing and interacting with humanity without getting some ideas, and even occasionally putting those ideas into practice, but practicing with the angel was a whole new, terrifying, kettle of fish. 

[4] James Bond wouldn’t have pussy-footed around when he found out Karen or Felicity was the one who had taken the incriminating files from his computer where he stupidly kept all the evidence of his misdeeds in a folder called CRIMES, DO NOT OPEN, nope. Also Miranda or Susan would have been darkly mysterious with a vaguely pornographic last name, and less into yoga pants and sensible shoes and more into tight cat-suits and karate. There would have been snappy dialogue, and at some point there probably would have been a martial arts battle or exchange of gunfire, and an exciting chase in cool cars culminating in someone going off a cliff. Jennifer's Prius was seriously lacking in speed, coolness, or flash gadgets, like hidden machine guns. 

[5] Because nothing screamed 'Happy Christmas' like torn flesh and a minor blood-letting. In the interest of lowering morale and increasing overall misery, Hell had glommed up all the old store-stock, gone sticky and decorated with decades of pocket-fuzzies, and placed some on the desk of every demon in a management position. They then forced it on any poor bastard called into their office. It actually backfired, as the lower-level demons with lacklustre work-records spent the most time being called on the carpet, and took to devouring it by the handful and using it to pad their reported Deeds of the Day with a personal blood-sacrifice for Lucifer. 

[6] Crowley didn't have a thing to do with the riot and the fires, but he was quite happy to dash off a note to Hell and take credit for it, once he had come down enough to sober up and naked day-glow angels stopped gavotting in the wallpaper


	2. The Second Part

Aziraphale had a lot to do so he got to work bright and early the next morning. Crowley woke up a day or two later, time being an abstract concept to immortal beings, even ones who had picked up human habits such as sleeping, lunch, drowning their sorrows in liver-destroying amounts of alcohol, and prolonged crying jags. (Aziraphale had accidentally sanctified Crowley's jacket with his tears. It was a total loss, since the cloth had become holy enough to make Crowley's eyes water.) 

After sobering up, Aziraphale had steeped and drank enough tea to make the entire East India Company's back teeth float, and started tidying the bookshop, including, with reluctance, some steps to keep out anymore unpleasant angelic visitors, which included scrubbing away the chalk Circle. He had actually been busy all day and night while Crowley, (despite his best efforts to stay awake and be a comforting presence somehow,) slept the sleep of the profoundly sloshed on the angel's little davenport. The mezzanine level of the bookshop was in relatively good shape, but the lower level was a shambles. Even with a miracle or two to right the toppled shelves and fill them up, it would be a long time until Aziraphale had every book and scroll right where he wanted them again. It didn't help that his usual method of organization and cataloguing, refined over several centuries, was right out the window, since he could only recognize most of the books by familiarity with their shape or cover and various illustrations. It was like seeing the face of a fond old acquaintance in a crowd with whom you have had wonderful adventures in your youth, but whose name you can't quite recall. Indeed, many of the authors had been fond old acquaintances, even dear friends, and though they were now so much dust reading their works had been like hearing their voices. Now they were truly ghosts and he would never hear them speak again....well, enough of that, (he told himself, eyes growing damp, and stiffening his upper lip so firmly it hurt.) It could really have been so much worse, in so many ways. He was still in one piece. He could walk, and talk (after a fashion,) and think. He had his memories. More importantly, he still had Crowley. 

Crowley eventually rose up, grumbling, shivered away his own hangover, and stalked sleepily across the street to fetch a coffee for himself and some pastries for the angel. When he returned he was as functional as he ever was before mid-afternoon. Despite the fact of the sign that said CLOSED, and the door that was firmly shut, Crowley had to bare his teeth and hiss at several humans who were gathered around, taking turns fruitlessly tugging at the door handle and attempting to peer in the windows. It perked him up to watch them flee, but he knew they'd probably be back, or some others just like them, so he put a minor curse on the door. Nothing deadly, just a strong static-electric shock with a snap like a firecracker to make them think. He didn't have the time or inclination to fend off customers for Aziraphale today, Aziraphale wasn't up to the task, and he had to make a call.

"Book-Girl!" Crowley said, in the cheerful voice of someone who is about to ask a favour.

"Um?" Answered Newt, who had picked up the phone. 

"Oh, hello," said Crowley. The name escaped him. Salamander? "You."

Newt apparently had some experience with leaving little to no first impression so he took this lacklustre greeting in stride. "Oh, hello..um..." What exactly was the proper, respectful honorific for an Occult being you've only met a handful of times, especially when that Occult being seemed rather surly and might be easily insulted and inclined to bite your head off? Or worse, inclined to curse a certain cherished male appendage into permanent retirement. Newt hadn’t spoken to old Shadwell since he had retired with Madam Tracy to the country, though Madam Tracy had sent Newt and Anathema a nice snapshot from their seaside package holiday.[1] His time in the ranks of the Witchfinder Army with the Sergeant had been, thankfully, short, and he couldn’t remember any warnings from the old man about the dangers of small-talk with demons you had recently saved the world with, just a lot of stuff about counting nipples. Newt had only recently, (and a bit late in the game as humans reckoned it,) discovered the joys of intimacy with an exciting young woman who vigorously returned his affections, and had two quite lovely and perfectly normal nipples, and he would hate to lose all that. "Mr...Lord Demon...sir?"

"Just Crowley. Put the witch on, would you?"

"She's a bit under the weather-" Newt started to say, but then Anathema was all, _who is it, babe_ and Newt was replying in a nervous whisper that carried: _the scary one from the airbase, do we want to talk to him?_ _Is it_ safe _to talk to him?_

Crowley rolled his eyes at this exchange. 'The scary one', was he? It was true, his Occult form would curl a mortal's hair. Aziraphale's true Ethereal form, on the other hand, would turn those mortal hairs gray and make them fall out. 

"I've got it," Anathema made soothing noises and shooed Newt back to whatever he had been doing, blowing up the toaster or whatever. 

"Book-girl!" Crowley decided to start over. “Rough weekend?”

"Bicycle-repairman!" Anathema crowed sarcastically. Satan, she did sound rough. Crowley could practically smell the bile on her breath. "It‘s Tuesday. And how did you get this number?"

"Ahrumm," Crowley said. "Demon? Soooo, Anathema. Thought the angel and I might take a drive out your way today. We need you to have a look at him."

"Is everything alright?"

"He's actually what I'm calling about. He got smote, to be exact."

"Oh my God!"

Crowley cringed and a little hiss escaped as he held the phone away from his face. "Not quite. It was another angel, an Archangel, actually. He's all in one piece, but he's, ah..." (Here Crowley's voice dropped, as if the angel was right at his elbow, rather than lost amongst tall, untidy shelves of books.) "... suddenly illiterate. And he can't speak, or rather, he can speak, but he's lost all his words, his own words, anyway. It's hard to explain." (In the background, Aziraphale had come out of the back of the shop with an armful of books to mend. He was wiping at his eyes. Crowley felt that strangling vine again, twining up around what passed for his heart, and this time it had sprouted thorns.) "Well, let him tell you." He put the phone on speaker and waved it in Aziraphale's general direction. "Angel, Anathema wants a word."

Aziraphale pursed his mouth. He had been a bit miffed when he learned about yet another book of Agnes Nutter's prophecies that had been delivered to Newt and Anathema's very doorstep, and instead of doing something sensible, like putting it somewhere safe and far away and out of their sight (like, say, his bookshop,) Newt and Anathema had burned it. It still rankled. He hadn't even had a sniff at it! But he came over and obediently spoke into the phone. "How do you, pretty lady?"

"Hello," Anathema said hesitantly. "Hello, Aziraphale, Crowley says you were attacked. Are you having trouble speaking?"

Aziraphale sighed. “I will tell thee in French, which I am sure will hang upon my tongue like a new-married wife about her husband’s neck, hardly to be shook off...”

"No, I get it. Oookay. I can already tell, this is probably not going to be in my area of expertise. I suppose a discussion with an actual doctor is out of the question here?"

Crowley and Aziraphale looked at each other. Neither of them had the least idea what might constitute a modern medical examination. Crowley had some vague notions from watching television that Aziraphale would end up attached to lots of machines that flash and go 'beep', while good-looking men and women in scrubs and lab coats argued about his treatment and then fell into a passionate embrace in the nearest supply cupboard. While that was not likely to be anywhere near Aziraphale's experience, he and Crowley were a demon and an angel wearing thin suits of flesh over a phenomenal, mind-bending amount of cosmic power. Who really knew what some poor sod might find inside of them? Best case scenario was revealing to human eyes on x-ray some astonishingly pristine guts that had never seen a day’s work. Worst-case scenario was the attending physicians finding a lot of blurry mental snapshots never meant for human eyes: Newborn stars swirling in clouds of gas before the beginning of time, (with one of Aziraphale’s wing-tips intruding into the picture,) or a dark, crouching figure cringing under white feathers, one long arm extended and making a rude gesture toward an approaching stormcloud. Possibly even a candid shot of the Almighty Herself playing an eternal and ineffable game of Solitaire and cheating outrageously. In any case, hook Aziraphale up to something that went 'beep' or take an x-ray and whatever appeared was likely to crash every machine in the Hospital, and cause a lot of screaming and running among the staff. “Ah, probably not a good idea. So, see you soon? Right then." He ended the call. “Ready for a drive, angel?”

Aziraphale thought of the long car ride with an uncertain outcome, and the greatest hits of Be-bop, and resigned himself. "'It is time,' the walrus said, 'to talk of many things, of shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages, and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings.'"

“I know that, it's something from that Dodgson you told me about. Odd old duck, wasn't he? Liked puns, good at maths,” Crowley said. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Outside there was an electrical crackle, a flash of light and a pained yelp: _Bloody buggering Hell!_ Crowley cackled so hard he staggered and tears of mirth came to his eyes. The trap had sprung, and it was hilarious. He should have thought of it ages ago. Aziraphale was not so amused. “Oh, what?” Crowley said, in response to the angel’s disapproving look. “So I cursed the door handle, I was busy. It was just a little tiny static-electric shock, no one got hurt.”

“He saith among the trumpets, Ha ha!” Aziraphale said doubtfully.

He had lost Crowley with that one, but he had the feeling Aziraphale was calling him a horse’s ass.[2] A snap and crackle and another flurry of inventive swearing. Crowley hugged himself and giggled, and Aziraphale pointed an imperious finger. 

“Alright, alright.” Crowley snapped his fingers. “There, all gone.” Though not really: Now anyone attempting to enter the shop would find themselves overwhelmed with an intense and very pressing urge to pee, and every public toilet on Oxford Street mysteriously out of service. “Killjoy.”  
**********************

It was a silent drive to Tadfield. Crowley was used to Aziraphale contributing most of the conversation on long trips: Complaining about the musical selection, chatting about books or the weather, commenting on interesting features of the passing scenery, or shrieking when Crowley turned a corner too sharply at a high-rate of speed. He did gasp and clutch the seat with the usual death-grip, and now and then point a trembling finger at whatever living thing (cyclists, post-carriers, slow-moving International Express delivery drivers,) that had narrowly escaped becoming one with the Bentley's grille, but it just wasn't the same. 

It was a relief to pull up at Jasmine Cottage. Anathema was looking a lot better than she had sounded earlier in the day. Crowley had half expected her to greet them at the door in a housecoat and slippers and clutching a hot-water bottle. Newt was his usual slightly dishevelled-looking self, and he even had a long smudge of grease across his cheek. He had been repairing little things around the cottage. While Newt still couldn’t be trusted with anything more electronically sophisticated than an electric toothbrush, he was finding that he had an uncanny aptitude for building and repairing such quaint old-fashioned things as garden gates, bicycles, and rabbit hutches, and had already become quite popular among the elderly of Tadfield. No one else seemed to have noticed the smudge, and Crowley decided not to mention it, because it was funny. Newt collected his offered mug of tea, and planted a kiss on Anathema’s cheek. “Thanks, love.”

Aziraphale clasped his hands together and looked very pleased. Crowley smiled with a bit too many teeth. Newt seemed content to sit in the background after that, hovering protectively close to Anathema, choking quietly on his tea and crossing his legs nervously when Crowley's unblinking yellow gaze (through dark lenses,) fell on him a bit too long.

Anathema bustled around, collecting witchy objects for her examination, when there was a knock at the door. It was Adam Young with a book in hand. He had let himself in. "Hi, Anathema, I brought your book back. Um, Dog is diggin‘ up your garden."

"Oh, that’s alright.” She‘d plant an herb-bed or something. “Did you like the book?"

Adam shrugged. The stuff about dancing stones, and the legend of the skeleton of the king in gold armour under a hill was interesting enough, but it was a pretty dry read overall. "Hi, Mr. Crowley, Mr. Fell. My mum says to thank you for the nice Christmas gifts."

Aziraphale smiled. Crowley gave Adam a brief nod of acknowledgment. He couldn’t forget that moment at the Airbase when Adam had looked through him and seen and known all of him, right down to his core, his every thought, and want, and deed. Crowley quite liked children, in general. They were such happy little agents of chaos, (such a pity, really, that so many of them had to grow up and become people,) but Adam still gave him the willies. 

Aziraphale turned to Crowley, smiling smugly. Crowley looked back and stuck out his tongue, hiding the snakey flicker behind his hand-no reason to frighten the muggles, Newt was already acting weird enough. 

The two of them had had a bit of a squabble around Christmas over what to send. Crowley voted for something fun, possibly also loud and explosive and flammable, like a chemistry set or fireworks. Aziraphale thought they had a moral duty as Godfathers to give something literary and educational, and less likely to cause dismemberment or death or major structural damage. In the end Aziraphale had sent a copy of Treasure Island, nicely wrapped. ("Wonderful, now he can die of boredom, instead." "It's a rousing adventure tale, my dear. Shutup." ) Crowley had sent a spyglass, which Adam’s parents had admired as a wonderful antique replica, and wasn’t it amazing what they could do with plastic these days. It was not a replica, nor was it plastic, it was the spyglass Crowley had used during a brief flirtation with being a buccaneer around the early 1700's. Crowley did not care for the sea-he was not that kind of snake-and had mostly stayed ashore, threw some outrageous parties, did his best to encourage lewdness, drunkenness, and general debauchery, and drank a great deal of rum. He also did his best to thwart the slave trade, but Hell didn't need to know about that part. Any reputable antiques dealer would have begged to get their hands on such a very antique object, and the disreputable ones would have sold their souls, but luckily for them Crowley was no longer in that line of work. The spyglass had been a big hit the next time the Them gathered at the chalk pit. It had led to a happy week or two of Piracy and a merciless pillaging of the snack table at the Annual St. Cecil and Church of All Angels Ladies Auxiliary Christmas Tea, and many angry editorials in the Tadfield _Advertiser_ by local grump and elderly busybody, R.P. Tyler, whose wife's slightly dry Battenberg Cake had been found outside in a bush with all the icing licked off. Aziraphale’s book wasn't so popular, but did a bang-up job of providing useful phrases, ("Yarrr!") fashion tips, and ideas for future piratical crimes when the weather had warmed up and the Them acquired a plank. 

Adam was deeply interested in the mysterious Occult objects littering the table. "Watcha doin'?"

"Mr. Fell isn't feeling so well and he needs a reading of his aura."

"Can I help? I could be your assistant and stuff."

Aziraphale looked doubtful, and Crowley opened his mouth to say no, absolutely not, bugger off, kid. But Anathema said, "I've got some more books boxed up, why don't you look it over instead and see if there's anything you want? Newt?"

Newt came to attention at Anathema's pointed look. "Right, right." He set down his mug with a clunk. "Come on, I think they're in the pantry."

"Awww," Adam said, slumping, but went off willingly enough. It was no use complaining, anyway. The chance of something really exciting going on is always directly proportional to how eager Grown-ups are to get you away from it, thus it is the curse of childhood to miss everything of interest. If someone's finger-tip got snipped off in a hedge-clipper, or a roof caught fire, the most Adam was going to see in the aftermath was a bulky bandage or a whiff of smoke in the wake of a rapidly retreating fire brigade. 

With Adam disposed of, Anathema immediately sat them down, handed them their own mugs of tea, (Crowley's mug quietly filled up with black coffee with a dash of something stronger,) and folded her hands. "Tell me everything that happened."

There followed a long recount of the previous days events, told through Crowley's recollections, with some pantomime and a lot of nodding and quoting from Aziraphale. Anathema put on her glasses, then did some fiddly stuff with crystals and tarot cards, consulted a few books, and hovered a pendulum over Aziraphale’s wrist, then sat back and gave him a good, long squint. “Your aura looks perfectly fine. ”

“Hmm,” Crowley said. “Good to know. Now fix him.” Aziraphale cleared his throat pointedly. “Please.”

“I can‘t see anything wrong with him. Spiritually, anyway."

"Look harder," Crowley insisted. “That’s kind of your thing, isn’t it?”

"I don't know what to look for."  
  
"Well, bless it, you're a witch, do something witchy, throw some sage on him."

"The modern term is Practicing Occultist, and he is not a Christmas turkey. I can't fix _it_ , when I don't know what it is that is broken."

"Fat lot of good you are then," Crowley muttered, and felt his eyes prickle. Because of dust and mildew in this bloody old cottage kitchen, not because he was sad or anything. Demons didn‘t wibble because their best friend was broken and couldn't be mended. The idea of watching Aziraphale, who knew as many languages as any human scholar on Earth, and a whole lot more the scholars had all forgotten, struggling to relearn the alphabet like a human toddler made him feel sick. Even if he could find a tutor somehow, that wouldn’t give Aziraphale back Gilgamesh in the original Akkadian, or the songs and poems of long dead Minoans. It wouldn't give him back his own words. Crowley pursed his lips and made a rude noise. "Not much of a witch without your book, are you?"

Aziraphale's alarmed gaze had been going back and forth between them, like a man watching a tennis match, but now the players had thrown down their racquets and whipped out duelling pistols. Thunderclouds gathered on Anathema’s brow. She placed her hands flat on the table, shoulders set. She opened her mouth, then her face crumpled alarmingly, like a collapsing soufflé. Her bottom lip wobbled. Tears welled up in her eyes and the tip of her nose turned pink. 

Crowley recoiled in horror. “Fuck a _duck!_ ” Aziraphale gave Crowley’s hand a little smack. “Ow! What did I _do?”_

Aziraphale went around the table where Anathema was sniffling with her head on her arms. He produced a handkerchief for her. She shoved it aside, then suddenly bolted in the general direction of the sink and stuck her head in it. Horrible gagging noises ensued. 

“Oh for Heaven’s sake...urgh.” Crowley smacked his lips and grimaced at the taste of holiness in his mouth. “I really need to stop saying that.” Aziraphale pointed toward the door. “Fine, fine. If you need me, I‘ll be at the car.”

Anathema and Aziraphale ended up in the tiny bathroom, which was the most private room in the very old and rather snug cottage. She sat on the closed lid of the toilet and blew her nose. Aziraphale put her glasses aside, gave her a glass of water, handed her a damp flannel for her overheated face. "I don't know what's wrong with me," She hiccupped. "I'm not usually like this, my emotions are in a stew and I suppose he hit a nerve. I'm not a Descendant any more, I'm just me, now. Everything feels new. I'm still dealing with it, you know?" 

Aziraphale nodded consolingly. He did know. Change was hard.

Her eyes kept welling up and spilling over as she waved her hands around. "Newt's been so good to me, though. I had a lot on my plate when the world was ending. I know I probably made him feel like this little, unimportant cog in the machinery of some Big Plan he was too dumb to understand, but the world was ending and there was just no time to explain anything. And afterward..." She may have had a teeny little breakdown, lots of staring out the window and feeling lost in a world that she now had to plan a future in without Agnes Nutter's handy guide. Newt supplied consolation and cups of tea, and (slightly burned) toast. "But he stayed. I feel so lucky to have met him, and to have him still. Even if he did blow up my toaster."

Aziraphale smiled sweetly and patted her hand. Weren't they both so lucky, to have such dear ones in their lives? 

"Ugh, I'd feel so much better if I could only shake this tummy bug," Anathema groaned, rubbing her stomach. "It's been bothering me for weeks-what? Why are you looking at me like that?"

Aziraphale wasn't just looking at her, he was looking into her, and what he saw made him throw his arms around Anathema suddenly and squash her to his chest. Given the angel's fondness for lotions and powder, it was rather like being engulfed by a large, happy marshmallow. He drew back and shook her hand like a pump handle. He pointed at her, then pretended to cradle something little and invisible in his arms, rocking it and chucking the imaginary object under the chin. Then he pointed at her again.

"Noooo," Anathema said.

Aziraphale nodded, beaming. _Yes._

"But-but-but," Anathema squeaked, tearing up yet again. "Newt hasn't-hasn't even-met my parents yet. Oooh."

Aziraphale didn't see what that had to do with anything, but he patted her and gave her more toilet tissue for her nose. There was a hesitant tap on the door, and Newt's concerned face appeared, with Adam's intensely interested face at his elbow and jockeying for a better view. "Everything alright?"

Anathema's practical side was reasserting itself under pressure. No use beating around the bush. She swiped at her eyes. "I'm fine. Just having a baby, that's all."

"Brilliant!" Adam cried, just outside.

Newt turned pale. "Right now?"

Anathema laughed wetly. "No, probably in about..." (She looked at Aziraphale, who held up some fingers,)..."Seven months or so?" 

Newt came in (the room was becoming quite crowded, and Aziraphale had to step back into the bathtub) and didn't quite know what to do after that. He put his hands under his arms, on his head, then settled for letting them flop nervously at his side. "That's...that's amazing. You're amazing. I just want you to know, whatever you decide, because I know you might not want to, er, do this, but whatever you do, well, I'll stand by you. I want you to know that. I love you, Anathema. Marry me." He knelt down and held Anathema's hand. "I mean, if you'd like?"

Aziraphale bit his knuckles and made a happy squeak. "Oh, Newt," Anathema said. "I love you, too. Yes! Yes!"

There was a lot of hugging and kissing and after that. "Ew, _gross_ ," Adam said, and made a swift retreat.[3]

"I love you," Newt said, overcome with emotion. "I love our baby."

Aziraphale cleared his throat until he had their attention. He made the rocking motion again, then held up two fingers.

"Oh," Anathema breathed. "Two?"

"Erk," Newt said faintly.

___________

Crowley leaned against the Bentley with his arms folded and watched Dog excavate a crater where the begonias used to be. Dog growled and woofed, telling anyone listening that, hell hound or not, that mole was a goner. Adam leaned next to him, copying the demon’s folded arms and broody slouch.[4] Crowley shifted uncomfortably and looked at his watch. 

“Your car is stupendous,” Adam said after a while. It was a new word he was trying out.

“Thanks,” Crowley mumbled. “Had her for years, one owner from new. Not a scratch on her.” Thanks to Adam, of course. She had been nothing but scattered bits of flaming junk before Adam had reset the world. 

“Oh, and Anathema’s goin' to have a baby! Isn‘t that amazing? ”

“Hm,” Crowley said. He cleared his throat, a question in his mouth.

“I know what you’re going to ask me,” Adam said, and Crowley nearly choked. “You want me to fix your friend.”

Crowley said, “Can you?”

“Naw,” Adam said. “And even if I could, I wouldn’t. I said no more messin' about, and I meant it. It's like that thing with the butterfly flappin' its wings. You can’t go changin' one little thing without changin' a whole lot of everythin' and makin' it _worse_. Best to leave well enough alone.” 

Crowley’s heart took a dive toward his shoes. “I suppose so.” 

“But,” Adam said, brightening, and Crowley was struck again by what an eerily handsome little boy he was, blond curls glowing like a halo in the afternoon light. He was never going to have that awkward, pimply stage that most human adolescents go through, where your arms and legs aren’t on speaking terms with your fine motor skills, and every hairstyle resembles a haystack, and none of your facial features seem to fit. He was going to go right from a beautiful boy to a striking and magnetic young man. “But, maybe. Maybe what’s happenin' with him just needs the right words, like in the stories Mum read to me when I was little. ‘Open Sesame!’ or suchlike. Just say the magic words and the spell will be broken. I bet that’s _exactly_ it.”

Crowley waited, hopefully, for Adam to maybe tell him what he thought those words might be, but he was quiet. How in Heaven was Aziraphale supposed to say them anyway, he couldn't even ask for a glass of water without reciting Coleridge. The bit about water from the boring poem about the dead bird, not the trippy one about Xanadu and underground rivers.

At that moment Aziraphale came out of the cottage and stopped short at the sight of Adam and Crowley together. His hands flew up and clutched at each other for comfort. He remembered Crowley's vow to beg Adam to mess everything about again if he had to, and since their visit to Anathema had turned out to be a bit of a bust, and Adam and Crowley looked so chummy leaning there against the car, he was very briefly terrified that Crowley might have managed to persuade him. The bookshop had been miraculously restored after the world didn't end, but much of his old familiar stock had completely vanished. Given another go-round, Aziraphale might be restored but something much more familiar and beloved-Crowley-might disappear for good. But after a moment or two, when the sun didn't turn to blood and the clouds didn't boil like an overheated soup pot, and Crowley showed no signs of fading away, he relaxed. 

"S'pose I'd better go," Adam said, who was having a lovely time but had important appointments to keep, and loped off to join Dog in the remains of the flowers. "Here Dog! Look what a mess you've made, you bad dog, you." Adam grubbed Dog lovingly and Dog panted up at him, tongue hanging out, in total, adoring agreement that yes, yes, he was a bad dog, the worst, the Terror of Rodents, the Destroyer of Garden-plots. "C'mon, Dog! Bye Mr. Crowley, Mr. Fell!" Adam retrieved his bicycle from a crushed mass of forsythia and rode away, an altogether human boy with dirty knees and untied shoelaces, his quite ordinary and only slightly hellish dog in pursuit. 

They watched him go, and Crowley turned to his angel, who was still looking a little white around the mouth. "So, Adam says Book-girl is up the duff, which explains a lot. Everything alright there?"

The tiny sparks of life in Anathema were no bigger than baked beans at the moment, and the smaller bean had been struggling, but a minor blessing set that right. Aziraphale smiled weakly and nodded. He made the same rocking motions as before, and held up two fingers. Crowley gave a low whistle. "Twins! How's Newt taking it?"

Newt had banged his head quite hard on the edge of the sink on his way down after his knees gave out, but another minor miracle had spared him a concussion. Aziraphale and Anathema had settled him on the sofa with a cold cloth on his forehead, and Aziraphale was sure he'd feel much better after a couple of aspirin and a good long rest. But this was all a bit complicated to say with Aziraphale's currently stunted vocabulary. "As arrows in the hands of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them."

"Hah," Crowley said. "That bad, eh?" He held the car door open for Aziraphale, then went around and got in. Aziraphale waited for him to drive them away, but he merely sat with his hands on the wheel. "I'm a knob," he mumbled. 

"Hm," Aziraphale agreed. 

"Didn't mean to be. I'll make it up to her, I promise." And indeed he did, because the next time Anathema came into the kitchen to get Newt an aspirin, she would find a very large and impressive wicker gift-basket from a very high-class shop. It was filled with pricey delicacies of a sort that would make Newt (who had grown up in much more modest circumstances than the mother of his future offspring,) bug out his eyes, and had a small card attached that said SORRY I WAS A KNOB written in Crowley's cramped and spidery print. 

Crowley still didn't move. He chewed his lip. His next words were quiet and small. "Are you angry with me, angel?"

Aziraphale wanted desperately to hold one of the long hands that were clenched on the wheel and tell Crowley that everything was alright. While they had had their squabbles in the past, Crowley had always exceeded his expectations for kindness in ways that put many a figure in Heaven to shame. He was a wonderful companion and friend and Aziraphale loved him dearly, even if he did sometimes put his foot in it in social situations. He opened his mouth to say all this, but to his despair he found himself saying earnestly, “Flowers are lovely, love is flower-like, friendship is a sheltering tree.”

“Coleridge,” Crowley snorted. “You know he was high as a giraffe's arse when he wrote that, don’t you?” 

Aziraphale gave the arm he had been clutching a pinch. Crowley chuckled. "I haven't given up, though,” Crowley said, ever the optimist. “We'll get it all back for you, Angel. I’ll keep in touch with Book...Anathema. We'll find a way. You‘ll be reading your Bibles and arguing with me about the greatness of Hamlet in no time." The car roared to life. "Where to now, angel? The bookshop? My place? More television? The Golden Girls are a hoot, you'd love 'em."

Somehow Aziraphale doubted that, but he didn't think he could bear to sit alone in his quiet bookshop at the moment, with its shelves of silenced voices. A nice dinner and glass of wine with Crowley at his flat was much more appealing, even if he was forced to watch appalling television. _Your place will be lovely,_ is what he meant to say. What came out was, "Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill." Which was not what he wanted to say at all, of course. 

"Your place, got it," Crowley said. Aziraphale drooped, but then Crowley added. "We've got a lot to do, so we'll order in. If you haven't forgotten, there's still a deranged Archangel wandering loose, and I'm not leaving you alone so he can come back with the rest of the angelic arsewipes and finish the job at his leisure. And you can stop with the fluttery eyes, I'm not being _noble_ or _nice_ , I have an ulterior motive. I need some time to put my big, demonic "Keep Out, You Feathery Bastards' Occult stamp on the place, because if it blows up I'll never get a crack at that Chateau de Beaucastel you've been hiding."

Aziraphale was smiling at him, hands pressed to his heart, cheeks rose-pink, a silent look that spoke a thousand words, and Crowley felt his own face flush. “Oh, shutup."   
_____________________

[1] Standing barefoot on a pebbly beach, thankfully not in bathing suits, and smiling. Madam Tracey wore an enormous pair of sunglasses, a big straw hat, and an abundance of costume jewelry. Shadwell was cleaner than Newt had ever seen him, wearing a shirt buttoned up to his neck, cuffs rolled up. He looked as though he had been scrubbed with a brush, and wore an expression of pleased bafflement, as if he wasn't quite sure how he had got there but was enjoying it all the same. 

[2] That's what he was getting at, yes. Job 39:25 KJV.

[3] This all gave Adam quite a lot of food for thought, and it would take some time to digest. Anathema and Newt were not married. He had assumed for a long time that humans got married and that just made the babies happen. Everyone he knew with kids had been married before the kids showed up. Even Pepper's parents, she said, though Adam wondered (privately, because Pep had a left hook like a mantis shrimp,) if it really counted as a wedding when the ceremony is held in a rainy field with sheep, and officiated by a giggly guy in a poncho who tied their hands together and sang 'Put The Lime in The Coconut'

When Adam had been a younger little boy he had asked his paternal grandmother where babies came from. (This was, of course, Mrs. Lucinda A. Young, the human grandmother who wore cardigans and kept peppermints in her handbag, not the other paternal Grandmother with the ineffable card game and Mona Lisa smile.) She had told him a baby grew in Mummy’s tummy like a little seed. Even as a younger little boy, Adam had the feeling Gran was withholding information and perhaps not being entirely truthful. The biggest proof of this was that he had yet to see packets of Baby Seeds in the shops, but maybe you had to send away for a catalogue and have them shipped.

At the first opportunity he went to his Dad, asked the same question, and innocently put in his request for some little brothers, three or four if they could get Mum to swallow that many seeds. Adam’s Dad had looked down at the shining face of his offspring, contemplating what a multitude of little Adams might get up to, then silently handed him a copy of The Family Medical Encyclopaedia and left the room. (It was a volume old enough to collect a pension that Mr. Young had bought at a jumble sale because it looked respectable and nicely filled-in gaps in the family bookcase. When Adam had finally put it aside an hour later, he was only a bit more knowledgeable about human reproduction, but knew quite a lot about how to build and equip a bomb shelter in the back garden, and the symptoms and treatment of St. Vitus Dance.) 

Mr. Young, who rarely indulged, had then gone into the kitchen and got out the bottle of expensive liquor his wife kept for her Christmas fruitcakes. He filled up an old juice glass to the rim and had a good long drink. His Adam was healthy, curious, clever, good-natured and kind, strong and handsome, everything a father could want in a son. He had a bit of the devil in him, true, (more true than Mr. Young would ever know,) but in every other aspect he was a fine boy, an admirable boy. And one of him was more than enough. 

[4] Crowley was a natural at Darksome Brooding, which was fortunate, since he had slept through Dagon’s seminar on the subject. Actually (thanks to the advantage of transparent reptilian nictitating eyelids,) even without his sunglasses, he managed to sleep undetected through most of Dagon’s decades-long series of mandatory seminars, including Lurking with Menace, and Meeting Your Demonic Goals Effectively And What Will Happen if You Don’t. Though he was unfortunate enough to wake up just in time for the PowerPoint presentation, complete with blood-curdling audio clips and some really chilling slides.)


	3. The Third Part

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are confrontations, knitting, confessions, and we find out what happened to Gabriel...sort of.

Aziraphale kept his chin up. He continued to put the bookshop back in order, mended what books needed it, and lacking the ability to read or do his accounts, got out his knitting needles and some pure white wool and started an extensive double layette while he waited for the wedding invitation. 

Crowley had been as good as gold, making regular calls to Anathema about any progress fixing his condition, fending off customers and cancelling some appointments, and bringing him little gifts and treats. (The lovely box of assorted Christmas sweets had been unexpected and especially delicious.) One evening, after a bit too much merlot, Crowley had even offered to read excerpts from one of Aziraphale's beloved antique bibles out loud. Thankfully there were no sparks or scorched fingertips, the books being no more holy than any other printed volume. The eyestrain afterward, however, was murderous, and after a very short time Crowley had ended up on the sofa with Aziraphale patting his hand, as he moaned piteously and cursed the printers and their non-standardized spelling to a particularly dark and buggy corner of Hell. [1]

Other than that, things went on much the same, but there had been no more invitations to Crowley's flat. Their regular walks in the park had become exercises in paranoia, with Crowley jittering and constantly on the watch for angelic attack-a duck had flapped its wings and he very nearly rugby-tackled Aziraphale into the lake-so for the sake of his back, and Crowley's nerves, their outings had temporarily been put to a halt. And they had only been out to lunch once, and poor Crowley had to do everything for him, from ordering the meal and a second dessert to picking out the wine. It couldn't have been much fun for him. More and more often he would leave the shop, making some excuse about tending his plants or running some unspecified errand, he said, but he wouldn't come back for hours. 

Aziraphale told himself he was being silly, but he couldn't help worrying that Crowley was becoming bored with waiting on him hand and foot, feeling stifled by the dusty confines of the bookshop, which being heavily warded, had become his foxhole. 

And then, one afternoon, while Crowley was out, Aziraphale had accidentally upset one of his To-Be-Read (Again) stacks. While he was putting the books back in order, he had found a paper on the floor. It appeared to be a print-out of various parcels of real estate, with little notations next to some rural properties in what could only be Crowley's handwriting. It was all indecipherable scribbles, but here was a circle over a somewhat dilapidated greenhouse in an old walled garden, there a large arrow pointing to a much more presentable cottage overlooking the sea, then some more scribbles and some excited exclamation points on a business area, (pointing out the local discotheques, he supposed, or whatever the youth were calling them these days.)

Aziraphale puzzled over it all for a bit, then went weak in the knees when it all became clear. He fell back heavily into his desk chair, the paper crumpled in his hand: Crowley was leaving London. Crowley was leaving him. Rural living didn’t seem quite his speed, but he couldn't see any other explanation for it. Perhaps he had put the listing there in his books, lacking the courage to speak his mind, and hoping Aziraphale would find it somehow and he could make a clean break without much fuss. For a demon, he had always been surprisingly bad at confrontation. 

Aziraphale felt a brief surge of anger-that sneaky, deceitful old serpent!- but as soon as it flared up it fizzled out. Crowley was the most adaptable creature he had ever met, so full of energy, life and colour, always in motion, always looking for the next interesting thing. Free of Hell's clutches, the world was his oyster. Crowley could go anywhere, do anything, _be_ anything. Why would he want to spend eternity cooped up in a stuffy bookshop with shelves full of potential migraines, coddling a soft old angel with a target on his back, who couldn't even give him a good morning in his own words? 

Crowley still felt affection for him, Aziraphale could feel it, though lately it had been tinged with anxiety and guilt. They had been through too much together to lose their friendship entirely, he knew that. That would remain, but once Crowley left the city it was likely that they would spend long periods out of contact with each other, decades, centuries, even, just like in the old days. Crowley deserved to be safe and happy, free to choose his own path. Aziraphale could give him that, at least. It was just terribly sad that they had missed their chance, it seemed, to be anything more to each other. 

“For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been,’” Aziraphale murmured. (Here a handkerchief manifested itself and Aziraphale wiped his streaming eyes with it.) Well. Well, that was it then. (He blew his nose.) They had had a good run. 

He still had humanity to guide and help and guard, as best he could. He had always considered that his true mission, and it always would be, no matter what Heaven might think about it. There was still much good he could do in Soho, if he could find the way with his current limitations. He still had the bookshop, and his books. They had been a great comfort to him once, and they would be again, in time. Perhaps some day, if he worked very hard, he might be able to read some of them again. 

But he really was going to miss Crowley so very much. 

**********************

Crowley wasn't quite sure what happened. In the beginning, at least, Aziraphale had seemed in good spirits. When Crowley blew through the door in the morning with a box of pastries, or some sweet, frothy concoction from the coffee shop, he would smile and seem quite like his sunny old self. They even went for walks in the park, (which sent Crowley’s stress levels into the red, since he spent the whole time with his head on a swivel, on high alert for psychotic Archangels,) or a lunch at the Ritz. Luckily Crowley knew the angel’s tastes in wine and food and he would order, but it all felt awkward. 

When it started looking like Aziraphale's condition might be permanent, the angel had fallen into a funk. Crowley had already canceled appointments with the angel's manicurist at the nail salon, a massage therapist, his tailor, an anxious woman from an Over-fifty Book-club, and the elderly Greek barber he frequented, like some kind of personal secretary, Then Aziraphale stopped leaving the bookshop at all. Some of the bolder bookshop patrons began to accost Crowley on the street and ask after old Mr. Fell’s health and well-being and whereabouts, with squinty, suspicious looks and a distinct lack of subtlety. Flyers from a local LGBT domestic violence support group began to pile up under the mail slot. They seemed to collectively think that poor (nice, weird, probably gay,) old Mr. Fell had taken a bad turn, and Crowley had gone full heartless gigolo and locked him away somewhere, the better to squander his wealth. Crowley found this immensely flattering, at first, that he still had that Old-style Hellish air of menace and danger. He also found it rather funny, (using the full force of his righteous ethereal wrath, the angel could have thrown him half-way across Soho if he had been inclined,) and cackling toothily in the faces of his would-be accusers didn’t help Crowley's case any. Eventually it just became a bother and since Aziraphale forbid him (in so many non-words and gestures,) from cursing the door again, he finally put out another sign under the Open/Closed: _I Couldn’t do him harm if I wanted to, which I don't, so for the love of Satan_ STOP BOTHERING ME. p.s: I DON'T NEED HIS MONEY ,YOU NITS.

Aziraphale had always walked around in a happy sunbeam of angelic light, but now it seemed to be fading rapidly, the shadowy edges of the shop creeping in to smother it somehow. He had always looked ambiguously youthful, for as long as Crowley had known him. To human eyes he could have been anything from a prematurely gray thirty-something, to a well-preserved blond of fifty. But now he was beginning to look every inch the shabby, old human bookseller that he had pretended to be for so long, and it made Crowley’s throat dry and his eyes hurt. He spent his days on the sofa, knitting and listening to his gramophone, but more often with the work forgotten in his lap, staring into space. Sometimes Crowley would catch him looking his direction, with a tragic expression, but then he would leap up and dart off into the depths of the bookshop. When he emerged again he would drift around like sighing ghost, touching the spines of all the books. Occasionally he would take one of the more familiar books off the shelf and sit with it in his lap, smiling sadly at it. Crowley would look on with his heart in his mouth, fairly certain that no angel, ever, anywhere, had permanently discorporated from a broken heart, but Aziraphale wasn’t like other angels, was he? 

The gloom was so strong it was beginning to drift out of the shop and infect the neighbourhood like a bad smell. Crowley would step out of the Bentley and feel it like a slap of funeral crepe across the face. The humans got the worst of it. Pedestrians who lingered in the area too long would be overcome with a deep melancholy, a hollow loneliness for some pet of years ago, or an overwhelming longing to talk to a friend or relative that they had lost contact with, or treated badly,[2] and were now reachable only through Ouija Board or a particularly gifted medium. Over there some human would be draped sadly over a post-box, or a woman sat in her car weeping over cat pictures on her phone, while the rest of the human traffic of Oxford street staggered by with downcast expressions, feeling like absolute crap and looking like poorly paid extras in an extremely sad low-budget film about urban life, where Craft Services was a half-empty vending machine of stale digestives, and the director beat them every morning with a copy of the script.

Crowley started to take long, brooding walks when he was supposed to be fetching the angel some cake, or spent hours watching mindless television back at his flat, and felt like an utter shit for doing it. Crowley wanted to be a supportive...friend, or whatever he was to the angel now. But he didn’t know what to do, and hanging about in the bookshop with Aziraphale’s sad gaze and missing voice and dimming light was worse that any torture in Hell. He would swear that sometimes lately he could almost see right through the angel, like that moment in the pub when the world was ending. It made Crowley want to jump up and throw his arms around him, hold him in place, but he was afraid his arms might go right through. 

And bloody Heaven, why was he thinking about that, anyway. It gave him a shiver. As a rule, demons had no imagination. They also lacked an Inner Voice. Crowley had both. Sometimes it entertained him with amusing digs at his Hellish coworkers, _(What in seven Hells is going on with Kobal’s hair today? Combed it with a hand blender_?) Sometimes it got him in trouble. _(That Lucifer is an alright sort, talks a lot of sense.)_ Occasionally it led to something unexpectedly good. _(Ooh, look, there's that fluffy blond angel on the wall again, he looks approachable. I should talk to him.)_

But because it was a demonic Inner Voice, it also had fangs, and would bite. Crowley had a (mostly) silent argument with it as he listlessly hurled peas at the ducks.

_This is your fault. Couldn’t just leave him in peace, had to wile and tempt and convince him to defy Heaven, didn't you?_

Heaven didn’t deserve him anyway. 

_You promised him you'd fix this. He's so disappointed, he can't even look at you._

(This hit a bit too close to what Crowley felt was the truth. He squirmed.)

_It's killing him, you know._

"Shut it," Crowley snarled. He threw the bag of peas over his shoulder, where it quietly vanished into the ether, and stalked off with his thumbs in his pockets, not even pausing to sink a duck for old time’s sake. (It just wasn’t as much fun sinking ducks without Aziraphale there to scold him.) "I’ll bring him something nice, maybe an ice-cream, vanilla with a flake," Crowley told the Voice on the way to the ice-cream cart. "His favourite, maybe he’ll even smile." 

The world stopped. The ice-cream man held out a dripping cone, the drop suspended in mid air. A balloon stopped flying away. Pigeons paused in mid-flight, traffic stopped. 

“Demon.”

Crowley turned slowly, his fangs exposed, a sprinkling of scales rising up. Shit! Shit! Shit! “Uriel. What an unpleasant surprise.”

Uriel’s face was the usual humourless mask. “You would have preferred Sandalphon?"

Erg. She had a point. “So. What brings you to Earth? Draw the short straw? Burning desire to kick some puppies?”

Uriel folded her hands primly. Straws! Ridiculous. They had done Rock-Parchment-Holy Sword. “I come from Above with a message for the traitorous Principality Aziraphale, but seeing as how he is unreachable at the moment, you may deliver it.”

His Occult mojo had done the job then. At least Aziraphale was safe in the bookshop if this conversation went pear-shaped. Crowley cut right to the chase. “You can stuff your message. Where’s Gabriel? Tell him to get his arse down here and fix what he's broken. _Now._

“That’s not possible.”

Crowley took a step forward, and was pleased to see Uriel take a step back. “Why not?”

“Gabriel is busy."

Crowley bared his teeth. “Bullshit.”

“You mind your tongue, demon,“ Uriel said. Something odd was going on with Uriel’s face, there were actual emotions drifting across it, and suddenly she was shifting like she had a full bladder and needed to squat. “He is taking a Leave of Absence from his duties. That is all you need to know.”

Unholy shit! Was that look _Guilt?_ What an exciting development. Guilt and shame, he could work with those tools. Crowley buffed his talons on his sleeve, pretending cool disinterest. “Well, that does sound ominous. Oh please tell me he Fell, because I would so _love_ to send that bullying prick a ‘Welcome to Damnation’ muffin basket.” Uriel looked deeply uncomfortable. 

_Aha,_ Crowley thought. He wandered over and began to make a broad, slow circle around Uriel, tapping his chin with his claw speculatively. She stared nervously straight ahead. “No, not a Fall, can’t get that lucky, can we. God can’t afford to lose anymore of her precious Archangels, but She could certainly give him an epic, holy arse-kicking,” Crowley said. He paused to dart up behind Uriel to hiss in her ear. "And I suspect he's not the only one in trouble now, is he?"

Uriel gave a little start, but then recovered herself and stuck out her chin. “The matters of Heaven are none of your concern, fiend.”

Which meant, _yes._ Crowley grinned mirthlessly. “You knew he was up to something naughty, didn’t you? And you let him do it. All you shining lights of purity Upstairs, afraid to get your lily-white hands dirty. So you let him be your little cat’s-paw to punish that annoying little Principality who put a halt to your Great War, and hoped Gabriel would make sure he would never get in the way of your precious plans again. Getting your arsehole boss fired must have been a nice bonus, though you probably wouldn’t have cared if he _had_ Fallen, or if Aziraphale had turned him into a cinder. Bet Michael was wetting her knickers in anticipation of that big career bump once old Gabe was out of the way. Got to say, I’m impressed. I knew your lot were bastards, but you all laid a trap for Gabriel worthy of a demon. His wounded pride dug the pit, and you arseholes gave him the nudge that tipped him in: You told him _no_. Satan, with 'friends' like you who needs demonic enemies? 'Leave of Absence' my arse. What has the Almighty done with him, I wonder?” 

"We do not know. He is not in Heaven. Neither is he in Hell.[3] We checked." Uriel looked like she might become the very first Archangel to need a cup of tea in a quiet place and a good cry. “Gabriel has been brought low, to atone for his Pride and learn humility, and we, Michael, Sandalphon, and I, have been made to confess our wrongs before the Host of Heaven and the other Archangels, to repent and understand shame. We plotted against our brother Gabriel, because we disliked him intensely, and Aziraphale, who was a right pain in our arse, but had committed no crime against Her. All things work toward Her Plan, because She is The Lord our God, the Omnipotent, the Ineffable, but She didn't ask us to try and go behind her back and start mucking around in it all willy-nilly did She, and therefore She is much displeased."

It sounded like bits of a speech she had already recited in front of a multitude of shocked and frowning faces. Crowley's mouth opened and closed several times. "Wow. Okay, then."

Uriel closed her eyes wearily and pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. "So could I get on with delivering this message, demon? I am tired of this conversation and I still have a _lot_ of paperwork to fill out."

Crowley's imagination supplied him with a pleasing mental picture of Uriel, Michael, and Sandalphon in the kind of enormous, chilly room Heaven favoured, crouched over desks writing _I will not go mucking around in The Plan_ ten million times with a very dull pencil. Uriel had a long way to go, and Michael was sulking, but making good progress, only about five-and-a-half million lines left. Sandalphon's page was blank, because he was supposed to write his name at the top and didn't know how to spell 'Sandalphon'. "Er. Yeah." 

"This is the message, given to us via The Metatron from the Almighty Herself: 'Tell the Principality...tell Aziraphale, that Gabriel is no longer of any concern. Aziraphale and those under his wings will not be interfered with again-' This includes you, demon, as much as that pains me- 'Go in peace. P.S: Speak the magic words, and be healed."

"What?" Crowley cried. " _Magic words?_ That shit again! Arrrrgh, You Ineffable bitch! You were listening! You're _always_ listening, you just ignore me! I knew it! What the Heaven does that even mean? Oi! Uriel! We're not done talking! Come back here!"

But Uriel had already disappeared and set the world back in motion. Crowley snarled at the sky and gave it two fingers. "Right, be like that, then! I don't need You! I'll figure it out myself, and fuck You very much!"

A little girl near the ice-cream cart pointed at the madman in sunglasses who was prancing and screaming abuse at the clouds. "Daddy, he said a bad word."

"I know, sweetie," her father said, handing her the ice-cream and gently steering her farther away from the lunatic. Bloody nutters everywhere, made you wonder what this city was coming to. "Isn't he funny? Don't tell Mummy or she won't let us come to the park anymore."

***********************  
The shop bell tinkled as Crowley came through the door. "Aziraphale! Angel, where are you? In the back? Come out, you won't believe who I met in the park today." He continued walking through the bookshop. The shades were drawn, dimming the usual twinkle of drifting book-dust. There was no sound except for muffled background noise from the street, not even a mournful sigh or the click of knitting needles. "Angel?"

Crowley went all the way back to what Aziraphale had always called his office, really just a deep nook where he kept his desk and that ancient beast of a computer, and the comfy chair and little sofa where they had spent many a drunken evening. He could see the top of the angel's fluffy head as he turned the corner, then he stopped short and staggered backwards until his back hit a pillar. Aziraphale was slumped down in his chair, eyes closed, looking very peaceful, his chin(s) on his breast. One soft hand lay on his stomach, the other over the arm of the chair, plump fingers that were beginning to need a good manicure pointing down to the book that had slid from his lap. 

_Told you so,_ said the Voice mercilessly. _Too late. Couldn't save him this time._

_"Angel!"_ Crowley shrieked. 

Aziraphale leaped awake as if he had been electrocuted. "What warlike noise is this?!"

"Hhnnnnnnnnn," Crowley said, clutching at his chest, and slowly slid down the pillar until his narrow rump hit the floor. More than six millennia without so much as a weary drooping eyelid, and this moment is when the angel decides to try sleep. 

Aziraphale jumped out of his chair and fluttered around, tending to the collapsed demon. He ran to the kitchenette, faster than he had moved in weeks, and fetched a tall glass of water. Crowley took it from his hand gratefully, then miraculously refilled it to the top with expensive whiskey and gulped it down. His head fell back as he finally exhaled, his head hitting the pillar with a thunk. Aziraphale vanished the glass before Crowley's limp hands dropped it in his lap. "Grah. Satan, you scared me. You looked, you, well, never mind what you looked like. Just never do that to me again. Bleeding _Christ."_

Aziraphale decided to overlook the blasphemy. He rubbed Crowley's cold hand between his two warm ones, a little puzzled. One moment he had been sitting alone at his desk feeling heavy and weary, looking at the rather garish cover of _The Lady and The Laird_ that he had got out of the drawer, and wishing that he had finished it before Gabriel showed up and ruined everything, and then Crowley was there. Was that what true sleep was, like a slow roll off a cliff into the dark? He couldn't say much for it, now that he had tried it, but no doubt it was more restful and refreshing when one isn't rudely awakened by a demon screaming in one's face.

Aziraphale sat down beside him. Crowley sighed and suddenly went boneless, tipping over into Aziraphale's lap. Aziraphale hesitantly put his arms around him. This was the closest they had been in weeks, and it would have been very pleasant if Crowley hadn't seemed so unhappy. Crowley hugged his legs and sniffled. "M'sorry, angel. I haven't fixed you, I know I promised. I know you're disappointed in me-" (Aziraphale made dissenting noises and petted his hair.) "I'm rubbish at this supportive friend shit, but I'll do better. I know you're sad. Just, just hang on, alright? We're working on it, no matter how long it takes. You've got lots of people who care about you, me, and Anathema and Newt and your barber and massage therapist, and your book-club and, uh, whoever those people are who keep bothering me in the street. We need you. I need you. You're my best friend. I love you, angel. Please don't leave me."

If Crowley had been looking into Aziraphale's face at that moment it would have seemed like the sun coming out after a month of rain. It was occurring to Aziraphale that (a) he had been a very foolish old angel and had come to an entirely wrong conclusion about those real-estate listing notes , and (b) he had Crowley, and Crowley had him, for better or for worse, as long as their lives would last, and that meant forever. 

Aziraphale opened his mouth to speak, but what came out was, "Oh Crowley, you dear old idiot, I love you, too, more than words can say, and I would never leave you! 'Wither thou goest, I will go,' you foolish serpent-"

Aziraphale squeaked and clapped his hands over his mouth. Crowley went very still, then he sat up. "Say that again, angel."

"You foolish serpent?"

"The other thing."

"I love you!" Aziraphale said, then whooped in a very unangelic way, scooped Crowley up off the floor and twirled him around until his sunglasses flew off. "I do! I do! I love you! More than anything! Tea! Toast! Bugger all this for a lark! Oh thank God, I can speak!"

Crowley thought it had less to do with the Almighty and more to do with Adam, some lingering antichrist mojo mixed with a human child's unwavering belief in magic and miracles. But She had Her hand in it. _'Magic words'!_ She couldn't just come out and tell him what to say, _tell the angel how you feel, idiot, that's the trick_ , no, that would be too easy, the Almighty had to let them both suffer and grieve, and Crowley wrack his brains until he'd like to set every angel on fire (present company excepted,) and kick Her up the bum with a pointy snakeskin boot. He should strangle that kid, too. No! Scratch that! Why punish the kid because Almighty God had a twisted sense of humour? He was going to get that kid something _fantastic_ for his birthday! A motorbike! Maybe a car! Can a twelve year old drive? Could he see over the dash? He could sit on a book or something. Crowley grabbed his angel by the hand and dragged him to a bookshelf. "Read this!"

Aziraphale opened the nearest volume at the first page. "'In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth, and the Earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved over the face of the waters." Tears came to his eyes. He eagerly picked up the next one, and the next. He picked up Sun Tzu in the original classical Chinese, Rilke and Machiavelli, and his dear Oscar, and he knew every book and scroll in the shop was an open door to him again, all the silenced voices, awakened. He took a deep breath and put them all gently back in their places. 

But to his horror, as he placed the last one, he felt Crowley's hand slip away. He was shifting from foot to foot and backing toward the door. A new pair of sunglasses had appeared on his nose and he pushed them up, hiding his expressive eyes. "Well. Well, guess you have a lot of reading to catch up on, s'good we got these, uh, feelings, out in the open, but I'll just be getting along, some watering and mulching and yelling to do. I'll drop back by later, next week, maybe, we can go out, get a late supper, have a drink-"

No! This was intolerable! Aziraphale wrung his hands, unsure what exactly he was going to do next, but desperate to not let him leave, to not fall back into the same patterns of all their centuries together. Drinks and dinner and nothing deeper, nothing more. As an angel, he had never really been allowed to want anything for himself, but oh, he wanted that little house and the overgrown garden, he wanted to make it all beautiful again with Crowley, and then lie beside him in the grass in the dark in Summer and let him tell him the names of all the stars. He couldn't bear to watch him walk away again! He needed to do something bold! What would the Laird do in this situation? 

Crowley squawked as he was suddenly pulled back into a crushing embrace and bent back sharply. Aziraphale was holding him at a near horizontal angle and giving him a look like he was the a la carte dessert menu at the Ritz. "Darling," Aziraphale crooned. "Stay with me, let us walk in Cupid's bower." 

As first kisses go, it was rather clumsy, a bit over-eager, a tad too wet, the kiss of two secondary school teenagers who had just discovered their mouths could be used for more exciting things than eating chips. Their noses bumped. Their teeth clacked. It was _stupendous_. Crowley wondered where the old Aziraphale had gone, and what this new Aziraphale had done with him.

"Unless you, ah, don't like that sort of thing?" Upstairs there was the breathless pause of a miracle halted in mid-progress, as mouldering books stopped redistributing themselves, a table set with candles and wine and silver platters of rich foodstuffs, and a sinfully soft, high bed with brocade curtains, paused on the edge of being. A sprinkle of rose petals hovered in the air over the embroidered duvet, waiting. Aziraphale's fashion-sense might have halted somewhere around 1950, but his idea of the proper atmosphere for a romantic tryst was firmly grounded in an era of powdered wigs and panniers. "I know I'm being quite forward, but-"

"I like, I like," Crowley croaked. 

"Oh, jolly good!" Aziraphale said, eyes twinkling. (Ah, there he was.) 

Upstairs there was a lot of heavy thudding and bumping and clinking of cutlery as the furniture situated itself, and a whirr like bird's wings as several hundred books took flight to new corners of the bookshop. He placed another, much more lingering, kiss right on Crowley's throat where his pulse was leaping about like an excited frog under a silk napkin. Crowley's entire body went numb and tingly, except for his bottom lip which still felt the impressions of Aziraphale's teeth.

"Hrrrrrrrrrk," Crowley said happily, with great depth of romantic feeling. 

Aziraphale smiled sweetly and raised his hand. "Oh my dear, you do have such a way with words." Then he turned out the light.  
_________________________________________

[1] It was one of Aziraphale's older Bibles, known as the 1535 'Bugg Bible', because of the error in the fifth verse of the Ninety-first psalm. ("Thou shalt not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges by night.") 

[2]...because it wasn’t Great-Auntie's fault she had a face like a collapsed flan, and didn’t know a gaming console from a hole in the ground and thought a Sega was a kind of antelope, and it really had been a very nice chess set after all, and you never sent a thank you note, or a single Christmas card after she went to The Home, either, like your parents asked you, because you were an undeserving, thankless little twerp, and aren't you ashamed now, now that it's too late? Yes. Yes you are.

[3] It really was a dark and stormy night in a busy city hospital, sometime, somewhere in North America:

A bleary-eyed first-year resident gives his clipboard a glance. His patient is an otherwise fit, well-dressed man, no sign of injury, no identification. Brought in by police after being found asleep, in the pouring rain, on the steps of a church. Agitated, questionable mental state, low-key hostile. Unarmed, but threatened to 'smite' the cops. He looks at his watch. ten hours down, only six more hours more to go. Oh, this was going to be such _fun_.

He pulls back the curtain of the medical cubicle. His patient is a soaking wet forty-something, surrounded by damp towels and swathed in a thermal blanket. "Good evening, Mr..."

"Gabriel. Just Gabriel."

Okay. "Alrighty...Gabriel. I'm Dr..."

The patient holds up a hand. "Not really important right now.”

Yup, fun. “Sooo. How are you feeling?”

He seems to give this some deep, befuddled thought, as if dampness was a new and unexpected concept. “Wet...?” The patient rubs his stomach and grimaces. It growls. “Empty. Why do I feel empty? This is all so weird.”

The resident makes a mental note to get this guy some sugar-free pudding cups or something before he keels over. “I‘m just going to ask you a few questions, if that‘s alright.”

“Go for it, human, but make it quick. I have places to be.”

Human? “Do you know where you are?”

The man looks at him as if the answer was obvious. “Earth.” Duh. 

Erm. “Do you know your full name and address? Is there someone you would like us to call?” 

“My name is Gabriel. Surnames are a human construct. You can address me as The Archangel Gabriel, Messenger of the Most High, or the Trumpet of the Lord. I’ve tried calling Upstairs, I can't get through.” He gives a pained shrug, forehead crinkling with effort, like a man wearing a coat a size too tight that he couldn't take off. “I need to tell them something funny's going on. I can’t manifest my...anything, and I’m having some unusual issues with this corporation. I think the Principality may have done something to me when I, um." (The patient now wears the shifty expression of a child standing next to a cookie jar, hands hidden behind his back and incriminating crumbs all down his shirt.) "Well, that's irrelevant. I'll explain everything when I speak to our Mother. I need to open an emergency line to Heaven a.s.a.p. Looks like I’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way, so I’ll be needing this room cleared, some pure beeswax candles and a piece of chalk." The patient brushes his hair back, straightens his soaked and dripping tie, and claps his hands together. “Well, c'mon, human, let’s get this show on the road, chop-chop."

The resident briefly sends his thanks out to whatever deity looks after exhausted med students. Yay, a possible contact, maybe they were getting somewhere here. “Your mother? Was she inside the church?”

"Pfft. What are your elders teaching you mortals these days?" The patient actually rolls his eyes. “Her power and might can't be contained within any earthly structure, human. She's God.”

Ooookaaay. The young man blinks, seriously reconsidering his career choices. Maybe it wasn't too late to get a guitar and join a band, like dad had wanted. He makes a note on his clipboard. _Recommend psych Eval. Seventy-two hour hold._ First the cuckoo televangelist with the angel inside him, now this. Why oh why did all the religious nuts roll downhill to his hospital? 


End file.
